Friday, May 20, 2011

LOS ANGELES -- Ex-Los Angeles Dodgers CEO Jamie McCourt on Thursday asked a judge to order the sale of the team, saying her ex-husband has badly mismanaged the franchise since he fired her nearly two years ago and brought one of baseball's most storied franchises to the "brink of financial ruin." [...]

Outside of court, Jamie McCourt's attorneys said their client could no longer wait to see what may occur with the Dodgers.

"As I've said all along, my goal is to resolve this situation for my family in a way that also advances the best interests of the Dodgers fans, players and franchise," she said in a statement. "This motion will hopefully provide some momentum in the right direction."

Strangely, I continue to be amazed at how both sides continue to scorch the earth with unabated flamethrowers. There's some full-on napalm bombing going on. In fact, John Yzurdiaga of Los Angeles had it right when he wrote this letter to the LA Times (published May 6 2011):

The audacity of the McCourts and their nasty divorce litigation has compelled me to pass on an old saying and an anecdote. Before embarking on their vicious divorce war, the McCourts would have done well to heed the old lawyer's admonition: "Enter the courtroom a hog and exit a sausage."

I was also reminded of the occasion when I was a young public defender in the courtroom of the Honorable Kenneth Gale, a fair, great and no-nonsense judge. Judge Gale was handling a divorce trial when he was moved to tell the lawyers on each side:

"Your clients remind me of when I was a young boy at the Hermosa Beach Pier with a friend of mine. There was a snow cone stand there, and we both wanted a snow cone, but couldn't afford one. They were 10 cents. We each had five cents, so we pooled our money to buy a snow cone to share. The fellow made the snow cone and handed it to my friend, who immediately spit in it, so I couldn't have it. Then I spit in it. So then, neither of us could have it."

So go the Dodgers.

But let's get back to this one. Watch Wasser's careful wordplay as he casts aspersions while at the same time admonishing those who cast aspersions:

The former couple's lavish lifestyle was exposed in court documents where it was revealed that they took out more than $100 million in loans from Dodgers-related businesses. Their spending habits were likened to using the money from the team as if it was their personal ATM or credit card.

When pressed about his client's contribution to the Dodgers' financial woes, Wasser sidestepped the question and said the focus should be restoring the Dodgers name.

"What I think you have to do is not cast aspersions on anybody," Wasser said. "You have to deal with the situation we have now, and the situation we have now is a situation and a need for action. We've put a very short fuse on it to get it resolved."

Okay, so let's not cast aspersions. I'm putting away my rod and reel. But then Wasser also said this:

"Over the past year-and-a-half, Frank has mismanaged the Dodger assets, and in the last few months, his management of the assets has become so unprofessional and commercially unreasonable that it is threatening the very ownership and value of these assets as part of the community estate," attorney Dennis Wasser wrote.